V. I. Lenin

I

The “Platform” of the Adherents and Defenders of
Otzovism

Apamphlet published by the Vperyod group recently
appeared in Paris under the title The Present Situation and the Tasks
of the Party. A Platform Drawn Up by a Group of
Bolsheviks. This is the very same group of Bolsheviks about whom, in
the spring of last year, the enlarged editorial board of Proletary
declared that they had formed a new faction. Now this group, “consisting
of fifteen Party members—seven workers and eight intellectuals” (as the
group itself states), comes forward with an attempt to give a complete,
systematic and positive exposition of its own special “platform”. The
text of this platform bears clear traces of careful, painstaking collective
work in an effort to smooth out all rough spots, to remove sharp edges and
to stress not so much those points on which the group is at variance with
the Party as those on which it is in agreement with the Party. All the more
valuable to us, therefore, is the new platform, as the official
presentation of the views of the trend concerned.

Thisgroup of Bolsheviks first gives its own “interpretation of the
present historical situation of our country” (§ I, pp. 3–13), then
it gives its own “interpretation of Bolshevism” (§ II,
pp. 13–17). And it interprets both the one and the other badly.

Takethe first question. The view held by the Bolsheviks (and by the
Party) is set out in the resolution of the December Conference of 1908 on
the present situation. Do the authors of the new platform share the views
expressed in that resolution? It they do, why do they not say so plainly?
If they do, why was it necessary to draw up a separate platform, to give an
exposition of their own particular “interpretation” of the situation? If
they do not share these views, then again why not state clearly in what
particular respect the new group is opposed to the views held by the Party?

Butthe whole point is that the new group itself is rather hazy about
the significance of that resolution. Unconsciously (or subconsciously) the
new group inclines towards the views of the otzovists, which are
incompatible with that resolution. In its pamphlet the new group
does not give a popular exposition of all the propositions contained in
that resolution, but only of a part of them, without under standing the
other part (perhaps even without noticing its importance). The principal
factors which gave rise to the Revolution of 1905 continue to
operate—states the resolution. A new revolutionary crisis is maturing
(clause “f”). The goal of the struggle is still the overthrow of tsarism
and the achievement of a republic; the proletariat must play the
“leading” role in the struggle and must strive for the “conquest of
political power” (clauses “e” and “1”). The state of the world market
and of world politics makes the “international situation more and more
revolutionary” (clause “g”). These are the propositions that
are explained in a popular manner in the new platform and to that ex
tent it goes hand in hand with the Bolsheviks and with the Party,
to that extent it expresses correct views and performs useful
work.

Butthe trouble is that we have to lay stress on this “to that
extent”. The trouble is that the new group does not
understand the other propositions of this resolution, does
not grasp their connection with the rest, and in particular it does not
perceive their connection with that irreconcilable attitude to
otzovism which is characteristic of the Bolsheviks and which is not
characteristic of this group.

Revolutionhas again become inevitable. The revolution must again
strive, for and achieve the overthrow of tsarism—say the authors of the
new platform. Quite right. But that is not all that a present-day
revolutionary Social-Democrat must know and bear in mind. He must be able
to comprehend that this revolution is coming to us in a new way
and that we must march towards it in a new way (in a different way from the
previous one; not merely in the way we did before; not merely with those
weapons and means of struggle we used before); that the autocracy itself is
not the same as it was before. It is just this point that the advocates of
otzovism refuse to see. They persistently want to remain one-sided and
thereby, in spite of themselves, consciously or unconsciously, they
are rendering a service to the opportunists and liquidators; by
their one-sidedness in one direction they are supporting one-sidedness in
another direction.

Theautocracy has entered a new historical period. It is
taking a step towards its transformation into a bourgeois monarchy. The
Third Duma represents an alliance with definite classes. The Third Duma is
not an accidental, but a necessary institution in the system of this new
monarchy. Nor is the autocracy’s new agrarian policy accidental; it is a
necessary link in the policy of the new tsarism, necessary to the
bourgeoisie and necessary because of its bourgeois character. We are
confronted by a specific historical period with specific
conditions for the birth of a new revolution. It will be impossible to
master these specific conditions and prepare ourselves for this new
revolution if we operate only in the old way, if we do not learn to utilise
the Duma tribune itself, etc.

Itis this last point that the otzovists cannot grasp. And the
defenders of otzovism, who declare it to be a “legitimate shade of
opinion” (p. 28 of the pamphlet under review), cannot even now grasp the
connection this point has with the whole cycle of ideas,
with the recognition of the specific character of the present moment and
with the effort to take it into account in their tactics! They
repeat that we

epassing through an “inter-revolutionary period” (p. 29), that the
present situation is “transitional between two waves of the democratic
revolution” (p. 32); but they cannot understand what it is that is
specific in this “transition”. However, unless we do
understand this transition it will be impossible to survive it
with advantage to the revolution, it will be impossible to prepare for the
revolution, to go over to the second wave! For the preparation for
the new revolution cannot be restricted to repeating that it is
inevitable; the preparation must consist in devising forms of propaganda,
agitation and organisation that will take account of the specific
character of this transitional situation.

Hereis an instance of how people talk about the transitional
situation without understanding what this transition actually
is. “That there is no real constitution in Russia and that the Duma is
only a phantom of it, devoid of power and importance, is not only well
known to the mass of the population by dint of experience, it is now
becoming obvious to the whole world” (p. 11). Compare this with the
estimate of the Third Duma given in the December resolution: “The alliance
of tsarism with the Black-Hundred landlords and the top commercial and
industrial bourgeoisie has been openly recognised and solidified by the
coup d’état of June 3 and the establishment of the Third Duma.”

Isit really not “obvious to the whole world” that the authors of the
platform did not, after all, understand the resolution, in spite of the
fact that for a whole year it was chewed over and over again in the Party
press in a thou sand ways? And they failed to understand it, of course, not
because they are dull-witted, but because of the influence over them of
otzovism and the otzovist ideology.

OurThird Duma is a Black-Hundred-Octobrist Duma. To assert that the
Octobrists and the Black Hundreds have no “power and importance” in
Russia (as the authors of the platform do in effect) is absurd. The absence
of a “real constitution” and the fact that the autocracy retains full
power do not in the least preclude the peculiar historical situation in
which this government is forced to organise a counter revolutionary
alliance of certain classes on a national scale, in openly functioning
institutions of national importance, and in which certain classes are
organising themselves from below into counter-revolutionary blocs which are
stretching out their hand to tsarism. If the “alliance” between tsarism
and these classes (an alliance which strives to preserve power and revenues
for the feudal landlords) is a specific form of class rule and of the rule
of the tsar and his gang during the present transitional period, a
form created by the bourgeois evolution of the country amidst the
conditions of the defeat of the “first wave of the revolution”—then
there can be no question of utilising the transition period
without utilising the Duma tribune. The peculiar tactics of using the very
tribune from which the counter-revolutionaries speak for the
purpose of preparing the revolution thus becomes a duty
dictated by the specific character of the entire historical
situation. If, however, the Duma is merely the “phantom” of a
constitution “devoid of power and importance”, then there is really no
new stage in the development of bourgeois Russia, of the bourgeois
monarchy, or in the development of the form of rule of the upper classes,
etc.; and in that case the otzovists are, of course, correct in
principle!

Donot imagine that the passage we quoted from the platform was a slip
of the pen. In a special chapter, “On the State Duma” (pp. 25–28), we
read at the very beginning: “All the State Dumas have hitherto been
institutions devoid of real power and authority, and did not express the
real relation of social forces in the country. The government convened them
under the pressure of the popular movement in order, on the one hand, to
turn the indignation of the masses from the path of direct struggle into
peaceful electoral channels, and, on the other hand, in order to come to
terms in these Dumas with those social groups which could support the
government in its struggle against the revolution.” This is a sheer tangle
of confused ideas or fragments of ideas. If the government convened the
Dumas in order to come to terms with the counter-revolutionary classes, it
follows at once that the First and Second Dumas had no “power and
authority” (to help the revolution), where as the Third Duma possessed
and possesses power and authority (to help the
counter-revolution). The revolutionaries could have (and in certain
circumstances should have) refrained from participating in an institution
which was powerless to help the revolution. This is indisputable. By
bracketing together such institutions of the revolutionary period with the
Duma of the “inter-revolutionary period”, which has power to help the
counter-revolution, the authors of the platform commit a monstrous
error. They apply correct Bolshevik arguments to those very cases to which
they are really inapplicable! This is indeed to make a caricature of
Bolshevism.

Insumming up their “interpretation” of Bolshevism, the authors of
the platform have even put in a special clause “d” (p. 16), in which this
“caricature” of revolutionariness has found, we might say, its Classical
expression. Here is this clause in full:

“d)Prior to the consummation of the revolution, no
semi-legal or legal methods and means of struggle of the working class,
including also participation in the State Duma, can have any independent
or decisive importance, but only serve as a means of gathering and
preparing the forces for the direct, revolutionary, open mass
struggle.”

Thisimplies that after the “consummation of the revolution”
legal methods of struggle, “including” parliamentarism, can have
independent and decisive importance!

Thatis wrong. They cannot even then. The platform of the
Vperyod group contains nonsense.

Furthermore,it follows that “prior to the consummation of the
revolution” all means of struggle except the legal and
semi-legal, i. e., all illegal means of struggle, can
have independent and decisive importance!

Thatis wrong. There are certain illegal methods of struggle, which,
even after the “consummation of the revolution” (for example,
illegal propaganda circles) and “prior to the consummation of the
revolution” (for example, the seizure of money from the enemy, or the
forcible liberation of arrested persons, or killing spies, etc.),
“cannot have any independent or decisive importance, but
only serve”, etc., as in the text of the “platform”.

Toproceed. What is the “consummation of the revolution” referred to
here? Obviously, not the consummation of the socialist revolution,
for then there will be no struggle of the working class, since there will
be no classes at all. Obviously then, then, reference is to the
consummation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Now let us
see what the authors of the platform “meant” by the consummation
of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

Generallyspeaking, this term may be taken to mean two things. If used
in its broad sense, it means the fulfilment of the objective historical
tasks of the bourgeois revolution, its “consummation”, i. e., the removal
of the very soil capable of engendering a bourgeois revolution, the
consummation of the entire cycle of bourgeois revolutions. In this
sense, for example, the bourgeois-democratic revolution in France was
consummated only in 1871 (though begun in 1789). But if the term
is used in its narrow sense, it means a particular revolution, one of the
bourgeois revolutions, one of the “waves”, if you like, that batters the
old regime but does not destroy it altogether, does not remove the basis
that may engender subsequent bourgeois revolutions. In this sense the
revolution of 1848 in Germany was “consummated” in 1850 or the fifties,
but it did not in the least thereby remove the soil for the revolutionary
revival in the sixties. The revolution of 1789 in France was
“consummated”, let us say, in 1794, without, however, thereby removing
the soil for the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.

Nomatter how the words of the platform, “prior to the consummation of
the revolution”, are interpreted, whether in the wider or narrower sense,
there is no meaning in them in either case. Needless to say, it would be
altogether absurd to attempt now to determine the tactics of revolutionary
Social-Democracy up to the consummation of the whole period of
possible bourgeois revolutions in Russia. As for the revolutionary “wave”
of 1905-07, i. e., the first bourgeois revolution in Russia, the platform
itself is forced to admit that “it [the autocracy I has beaten back the
first wave of the revolution” (p. 12), that we are passing through an
“inter-revolutionary” period, a period “between two waves of a
democratic revolution.

Nowwhat is the source of this endless and hopeless muddle in the
“platform"? It lies in the fact that the platform dissociates itself from
otzovism diplomatically without abandoning the ideology of otzovism,
without correcting its fundamental error, and without even noticing it. It
lies in the fact that the Vperyodists regard otzovism as a “legitimate
shade of opinion”, i. e., they regard the otzovist shade of a caricature
of Bolshevism as a law, a model, an unexcelled model. Anyone who
has set foot on this sloping path is bound to slide into a bog of hopeless
confusion; he repeats phrases and slogans without being capable of
pondering over the conditions of their application and the limits
of their importance.

Why,for example, did the Bolsheviks in 1906–07 so often oppose the
opportunists with the slogan, “the revolution
is not over”? Because the objective conditions were such that the
consummation of the revolution in the narrow sense of the word was out of
the question. Take, for instance, the period of the Second Duma—the most
revolutionary parliament in the world and probably the most reactionary,
autocratic government. There was no direct way out of this except by a coup
d’état from above, or by an uprising from below. And however much
the sapient pedants may now shake their heads, no one could say beforehand
whether the government’s coup d’état would be successful, whether it
would pass off smoothly, or whether Nicholas II would break his neck in the
attempt. The slogan, “the revolution is not over”, had a most vital,
immediately important, practically palpable significance, for it
alone correctly expressed things as they really were and whither
they were tending by virtue of the objective logic of events. And now that
the otzovists themselves recognise the present situation as
“inter-revolutionary”, is not the attempt to represent otzovism as a
“legitimate shade of the revolutionary wing”, “prior to the consummation
of the revolution”, a hopeless muddle?

Inorder to extricate oneself from this vicious circle of
contradictions, one must not use diplomacy towards otzovism, but must cut
the ideological ground from under it; one must adopt the point of view of
the December resolution and think out all its implications. The present
inter-revolutionary period cannot be explained away as a mere
accident. There is no doubt now that we are confronted by a special stage
in the development of the autocracy, in the development of the bourgeois
monarchy, bourgeois Black-Hundred parliamentarism and the bourgeois policy
of tsarism in the countryside, and that the counter-revolutionary
bourgeoisie is supporting all this. The present period is undoubtedly a
transitional period “between two waves of the revolution”, but
in order to prepare for the second revolution we must master the
peculiarities of this transition, we must be able to adapt our tactics and
organisation to this difficult, hard, sombre transition forced on us by the
whole trend of the “campaign”. Using the Duma tribune, as well as all
other legal opportunities, is one of the humble methods of struggle which
do not result in anything “spectacular”.
But the transitional period is transitional precisely be cause its specific
task is to prepare and rally the forces, and not to bring them
into immediate and decisive action. To know how to organise this work,
which is devoid of outward glamour, to know how to utilise for this purpose
all those semi-legal institutions which are peculiar to the period of the
Black-Hundred-Octobrist Duma, to know how to uphold even on this
basis all the traditions of revolutionary Social-Democracy, all the
slogans of its recent heroic past, the entire spirit of its work, its
irreconcilability with opportunism and reformism—such is the task of
the Party, such is the task of the moment.

Wehave examined the new platform’s first deviation from the tactics
set out in the resolution of the December Conference of 1908. We have seen
that it is a deviation towards otzovist ideas, ideas that have nothing in
common either with the Marxist analysis of the present situation or with
the fundamental premises of revolutionary Social-Democratic tactics in
general. Now we must examine the second original feature of the new
platform.

Thisfeature is the task, proclaimed by the new groups of “creating”
and “disseminating among the masses a new, proletarian” culture: “of
developing proletarian science, of strengthening genuine comradely
relations among the proletarians, of developing a proletarian philosophy,
of directing art towards proletarian aspirations and experience” (p. 17).

Hereyou have an example of that naive diplomacy which in the new
platform serves to cover up the essence of the matter! Is it not really
naïve to insert between “science” and “philosophy” the
“strengthening of genuine comradely relations”? The new group introduces
into the platform its supposed grievances, its
accusations against the other groups (namely, against the orthodox
Bolsheviks in the first place) that they have broken “genuine comradely
relations”. Such is precisely the real content of this amusing
clause.

Here“proletarian science” also looks “sad and out of place”. First
of all, we know now of only one proletarian science—Marxism. For some
reason the authors of the platform systematically avoid this, the only
precise term, and everywhere use the words “scientific socialism”
(pp. 13, 15,
16, 20, 21). It is common knowledge that even outright opponents of Marxism
lay claim to this latter term in Russia. In the second place, if the task
of developing “proletarian science” is introduced in the platform, it is
necessary to state plainly just what ideological and theoretical struggle
of our day is meant here and whose side the authors of the platform
take. Silence on this point is a naïve subterfuge, for the essence
of the matter is obvious to everyone who is acquainted with the
Social-Democratic literature of 1908–09. In our day a struggle
between the Marxists and the Machists has come to the fore and is being
waged in the domain of science, philosophy and art. It is ridiculous, to
say the least, to shut one’s eyes to this commonly known
fact. “Platforms” should be written not in order to gloss over
differences but in order to explain them.

Ourauthors clumsily give themselves away by the above-quoted passage
of the platform. Everyone knows that it is Machism that is in
fact implied by the term “proletarian philosophy”—and every
intelligent Social-Democrat will at once decipher the “new”
pseudonym. There was no point in inventing this pseudonym, no
point in trying to hide behind it. In actual fact, the most influential
literary nucleus of the new group is Machist, and it regards non-Machist
philosophy as non-“proletarian”.

Hadthey wanted to speak of it in the platform, they should have said:
the new group unites those who will fight against non-“proletarian”,
i. e., non-Machist, theories in philosophy and art. That would have been a
straight forward, truthful and open declaration of a well-known
ideological trend, an open challenge to the other tendencies. When
an ideological struggle is held to be of great importance for the Party,
one does not hide but comes out with an open declaration of war.

Andwe shall call upon everyone to give a definite and clear answer to
the platform’s veiled declaration of a philosophical struggle against
Marxism. In reality, all the phraseology about “proletarian
culture” is just a screen for the struggle against Marxism. The
“original” feature of the new group is that it has introduced
philosophy into the Party platform without stating frankly
what tendency in philosophy it advocates.

Incidentally,it would be incorrect to say that the real content of the
words of the platform quoted above is wholly negative. They have a certain
positive content. This positive content can be expressed in one name: Maxim
Gorky.

Indeed,there is no need to conceal the fact already pro claimed by the
bourgeois press (which has distorted and twisted it), namely, that Gorky is
one of the adherents of the new group. And Gorky is undoubtedly the
greatest representative of proletarian art, one who has done a
great deal for this art and is capable of doing still more in the
future. Any faction of the Social-Democratic Party would be justly proud of
having Gorky as a member, but to intro duce “proletarian art” into the
platform on this ground means giving this platform a certificate
of poverty, means reducing one’s group to a literary circle, which
exposes itself as being precisely “authoritarian”.... The authors of the
platform say a great deal against recognising authorities, without
explaining directly what it is all about. The fact is that they regard the
Bolsheviks’ defence of materialism in philosophy and the Bolsheviks’
struggle against otzovism as the enterprise of individual “authorities”
(a gentle hint, at a serious matter) whom the enemies of Machism, they say,
“trust blindly”. Such sallies, of course, are quite childish. But it is
precisely the Vperyodists who mistreat authorities. Gorky is an authority
in the domain of proletarian art—that is beyond dispute. The attempt to
“utilise” (in the ideological sense, of course) this authority
to bolster up Machism and otzovism is an example of how one should
not treat authorities.

Inthe field of proletarian art Gorky is an enormous asset in
spite of his sympathies for Machism and otzovism. But a platform
which sets up within the Party a separate group of otzovists and Machists
and advances the development of alleged “proletarian” art as a special
task of the group is a minus in the development of the
Social-Democratic proletarian movement; because this platform wants to
consolidate and utilise the very features in the activities of an
outstanding authority which represent his weak side and are a negative
quantity in the enormous service he renders the proletariat.